My teacher is in the frond at the start of the class. Today she gave students about 15 minutes to come up and talk to her about missins class, get together their assignments, and set up for their daily activities. During this time, she takes attendance via a computer program. She is very lenient, sending students to their lockers or the bathroom... there were many bathroom breaks. She even offered one student permission to call his mom via cell phone because he forgot his project. The rest of the classes, we did presentations, took a metric quiz and sat in for a general science lecture. She had the Gen. Sci. students open their book for the first time today and talking about how they are going to finally introduce the "content" part of the class because the first month was dedicated to labs and studying the metric system.
Classroom management: Students are given a chance to be mature and sit with their friends. If they fail to show they are mature enough to not talk during class, she gives them one warning before separating them with a new seating arrangement. Today I told two students to stop talking during a quiz.
Reflections:
The lecture helped me see today what content the students actually know when it comes to general science. I think she used her introductory "lecture" as an assessment, because she used student responses to drive her lecture and bolstered it along the way. I'm surprised that she is referring to content as separate from labs and the metric system. To me they all seemed integrated and those labs and applications should be encouraged throughout the year, but I also have not observed the entire year yet. The students in Physiology were quiet and tired... mainly seniors. The project she had assigned to them required them to give presentations today to sum everything up. Students were disengaged and many did not seem to care about their poster/presentor. Even though they were applied to the human body (a personal application) students were numb to the information. I believe that something bigger definately needs to be encorporated into the lesson, something to grab them a bit more... what that is I don't exactly know yet. I do know that for the presentations, I will pick on one student during their persentation and ask them to tell me what it means when they use words like "extracellular fluid. "Many read information at a college physiology reading level when giving their presentations. Encouraging them to put it into a "known language" will help them understand the material better and using a student as an example will show other students what I expect out of them and what is important. Fancy tables and posters don't mean jack if you can't understand them yourself.
Classroom mangagement: It would have been better if I had asked those two girls if there was something I could answer for them as a more passive approach to get them to stop talking. No reason for dirty looks to accur before I even start teaching.
Observations:
My teacher is in the frond at the start of the class. Today she gave students about 15 minutes to come up and talk to her about missins class, get together their assignments, and set up for their daily activities. During this time, she takes attendance via a computer program. She is very lenient, sending students to their lockers or the bathroom... there were many bathroom breaks. She even offered one student permission to call his mom via cell phone because he forgot his project. The rest of the classes, we did presentations, took a metric quiz and sat in for a general science lecture. She had the Gen. Sci. students open their book for the first time today and talking about how they are going to finally introduce the "content" part of the class because the first month was dedicated to labs and studying the metric system.Classroom management: Students are given a chance to be mature and sit with their friends. If they fail to show they are mature enough to not talk during class, she gives them one warning before separating them with a new seating arrangement. Today I told two students to stop talking during a quiz.
Reflections:
The lecture helped me see today what content the students actually know when it comes to general science. I think she used her introductory "lecture" as an assessment, because she used student responses to drive her lecture and bolstered it along the way. I'm surprised that she is referring to content as separate from labs and the metric system. To me they all seemed integrated and those labs and applications should be encouraged throughout the year, but I also have not observed the entire year yet. The students in Physiology were quiet and tired... mainly seniors. The project she had assigned to them required them to give presentations today to sum everything up. Students were disengaged and many did not seem to care about their poster/presentor. Even though they were applied to the human body (a personal application) students were numb to the information. I believe that something bigger definately needs to be encorporated into the lesson, something to grab them a bit more... what that is I don't exactly know yet. I do know that for the presentations, I will pick on one student during their persentation and ask them to tell me what it means when they use words like "extracellular fluid. "Many read information at a college physiology reading level when giving their presentations. Encouraging them to put it into a "known language" will help them understand the material better and using a student as an example will show other students what I expect out of them and what is important. Fancy tables and posters don't mean jack if you can't understand them yourself.Classroom mangagement: It would have been better if I had asked those two girls if there was something I could answer for them as a more passive approach to get them to stop talking. No reason for dirty looks to accur before I even start teaching.
Class Topic:Physiology/ Earth Science
Grade: mainly seniors/ mainly freshmen
Observed by: Samantha DeCuollo